


Deck The Halls

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 14:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3137561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet’s friends help her decorate, her first Christmas in Mecklenburg Square.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deck The Halls

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas time is here, by golly, disapproval would be folly/Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fill the jug and don’t say when. - Tom Lehrer, A Christmas Carol

At the foot of the stairs to her flat, Harriet discovered that Eiluned was singing Christmas carols again. This was not necessarily a problem: Eiluned had a lovely singing voice, and Harriet happened to know that her nearest neighbour was a great fan of Christmas music. On the other hand, Harriet’s landlady was not.

Harriet went upstairs and knocked on her flat’s front door; Eiluned broke off in the middle of a particularly soaring Gloria and opened it.

“How’s the shopping? Did you get everything?”

“Yes,” Harriet said, accurately interpreting ‘everything’ as including ‘another bottle of wine’ and handing her shopping bag to Eiluned, who bore it off in the direction of their abandoned wine glasses. “It’s snowing like the blazes out there. How goes the decorating?”

“O come, all ye faithful,” Eiluned hummed, apparently bored with Ding Dong, Merrily On High, as she poured the wine.

“ _No_ ,” Mary said severely, “you know how I feel about that song. The decorating proceeds apace, Harriet, but must you have such high ceilings?”

Harriet, a tall woman who had made rooms she could comfortably stand up straight in a priority in her recent hunt for a new flat, eyed Mary, who was standing on a stepladder not belonging to Harriet and attempting to hang garlands. “Yes,” Harriet said. “Where did the stepladder come from?”

“...Emmanuel shall come to thee O I-I-Israellll,” Eiluned warbled, slightly off-key, and dropped back into her speaking voice. “A perfect gentleman’s gentleman turned up with it not half a minute ago. He said Lord Peter had suddenly bethought him of the difficulties inherent in decorating a tree six inches taller than oneself. Harriet, you want to disentangle yourself from this Wimsey man.”

“I’m trying, I’m _trying_ ,” Harriet said irritably, accepting a glass of wine and turning her eyes on the immense Christmas tree in the corner of her living room. It had turned up three days ago, accompanied by a posse of workmen, Bunter and his lordship’s compliments and best wishes for the festive season. “He’s damned persistent.”

“He’s likeable,” Mary observed. “I remember when... well, he was very kind.”

An awkward silence fell. 

“I don’t want him to be kind,” Harriet said, breaking it. “I don’t want to go around being _grateful_ to him. And I resent being obliged, by the canons of politeness, to go out and try to find a Christmas present for-“

“The man who has everything?” Mary said, drolly.

“Exactly,” Harriet said, and drained her glass. “Do come down from there, Mary, and let me put the star up on the tree.”

Harriet climbed the stepladder and easily perched the filigree star she had brought away from home after her parents’ death on the top of the tree, where it belonged (though it was sadly crushed against the ceiling, and she reflected vengefully on Lord Peter’s extravagance). Eiluned, watching her, broke into Once In Royal David’s City.

“Be careful, do,” Mary said, sipping at her wine and watching Harriet anxiously.

“I am being careful,” Harriet said in slight exasperation, and wondered what she would do without her friends. 

She did not even realise that she now included Lord Peter Wimsey in that number.


End file.
